What do you mean, "his X-rays will show no evidence of being shot through?" Be quite and let me work on my memory erasing bullets in peace.

Have you ever met an interesting person and wondered how they arrived at that particular junction of their lives? Of course you do. Or maybe not, I dunno. The fact is, curiosity drives us to wonder like this.

It's no different with fictional characters. However, very often, especially if a character's coolness is helped by having a mysterious past, trying to tell the origins of a character you know and love already is a bad idea. And a lot of times, those origins aren't something the character really needs. Here's some examples.

Everyone in Shenmue:

But aren't you curious what they do when not being punched?

Shenmue is the precursor to a lot of what we're doing right now in video games, for good or for ill. However, one fact that didn't caught on was that every single, solitary NPC, enemy and pretty much every character had a name and a backstory.

Look at this shit. How much of this do you think comes into play in the actual game? Hardly any. It's one thing to see each character head to home after hours, it's another to know that they're still paying their mortgage.

Master Chief:

Stupid floor! Help! I'm stuck!

If you're willing to invest yourself in Halo Mythology, you could learn a lot about it's protagonist,Spartan Super Soldier Master Chief. You could learn he was once a boy who was kidnapped, replaced with a clone, and made into a supersoldier. You could learn his name is John.

You could...but play the freaking games. Master Chief is known for never showing you under his helmet , for attempting to finish the fight and for being marooned on the surface of a ring-world. Does his origin change any the perception of him?

In fact, in the games, The Chief is purposely kept a mostly blank slate, because it's the player who guides the character's actions. How he became a soldier isn't even a priority in this story of alien zealots, secret super plagues, and lovelorn AIs.

Sonic the Hedgehog:

Is he putting the number 2 or taking it?

Now, kids, Sonic may have become a convoluted mess of friends and Final Fantasy knock off monster bosses now, but there was a time when Sonic was just a Felix the Cat analogue fighting evil Teddy Roosevelt and his robots by running from the left side of the screen to the right side of the screen.

And during those times, in the official games, there WAS no explanation where he came from. At least in the games. Sega of America made a friggin' bible trying to get just where Sonic is that leads him to be what he is. And, you know, it involves Sonic 's past as an actual, bug eating hedgehog, his father dying and him becoming an anthropomorphic hedgehog because of radioactive sludge.

Sonic Begins.

Of course, you could take the Sonic Underground origin, as sung by Not-Disturbed, about how he's really a heir apparent and searching for his mother because of a prophecy.

Hey, geniuses, Sonic doesn't need an origin. He's a cartoon hedgehog that runs into trouble with robots. Don't try to make this explainable by tacking on origin to it.

Now, enough has been said about the Star Wars prequels to block out the sun itself, and most of it isn't good.

Now, I don't want to retread that old ground and I don't really hate the Prequels that much. But as a point of analysis, I ask you: What where the prequels supposed to be? Why they where supposed to show the story that lead to the Origin of the Empire, and the origin of Iconic asthmatic Villain Darth Vader.

And as bad as the movies may have been, they did set up the Empire, if in an overly convoluted way. But Vader, not so much.

I mean, yes, he ends up in the suit. But the character is not really the same. See, Vader, as voiced by James Earl Jones, had a suaveness to him. When he's yelling at you to find them and bring them back alive, you get a sense he's a leader. But when he's not aggravated, you get a sense there's more to him than being a space bully. He's like...a very smart, cultured man. Or at least a man with some wisdom.

They should have gotten Collin Salmon to dub over Hayden Christensen.

The Prequels essentially have him as an angry young, dumb man. You never get a sense that he's anything more than that. He doesn't have the leadership skills or confidence in the Force that future Vader does, and it doesn't show where those came from. I guess for that they would need to bridge between Ep 3 and Star Wars, huh? But if Lucas can't tell this origin properly in 3 movies, I doubt he could do it in 1.

But seriously, what are the defining points of Anakin by his final battle with Obi Wan? He thinks that the Jedi are evil(though he has no real reason to believe this), he wants to gain enough power to stop death(for one person, which he himself choked with little provocation) and he's willing to help a shady old man he knows is evil(who explicitly draws his powers from something known as "the dark side". No confusion there.) into ruling the galaxy. He's evil, sure. But he's not the kind of evil real Vader is.